Kakao forges partnership with Japan's top smart call-taxi service

SEOUL -- Kakao Mobility, the smart call-taxi wing of South Korea's web service giant Kakao, made a capital investment into Japan's top mobile call-taxi company and forged a business partnership to launch an interlinked "taxi-roaming" service between their call-taxi smartphone apps.

Kakao Mobility said in a statement Thursday that the company invested 1.5 billion Japanese yen ($134.7 million) into JapanTaxi, and agreed to develop the taxi-roaming service during the first half of 2019.

Just like roaming services provided by mobile carriers, the taxi-roaming service will allow travelers to use their call-taxi apps in different countries. A South Korean tourist can call a taxi in Japan by using Kakao's taxi-hailing app and vice versa.

"We will cooperate with JapanTaxi by sharing the know-how and technology of Kakao Mobility to bring an innovative change in Japan's taxi market," Kakao Mobility CEO Jung Joo-hwan said, adding Japan is the world's largest taxi market.

"We will achieve 16 million app downloads and expand the number of affiliated taxis to about 40 percent of the total number of taxis being operated in Japan by 2020," said JapanTaxi CEO Kawanabe Ichiro.